Letting Go!

It's time to dump your emotional baggage, every bit of it — and to realize who you really are!

How much emotional baggage are you carrying? Unresolved conflicts with anyone? Issues with ex-lovers, friends, parents, children, that are still bothering you? There will never be a better time to let go of them than right now!

How to do it? Simple: Forgiveness. Simple, but maybe not easy. : ^ ) Anyway, it's what we have to do — forgive everyone who has ever hurt us!

In case you're thinking, "No way!! Forgive that *#*$#)%(&@!! — after what he did to ME??" ... let me offer you some incentive. Would you be willing to forgive him if you became happier and healthier by doing it? If it made you feel lighter and more energetic? If it changed your eating habits and you even lost weight?

Be Selfish Enough to Forgive

Yes, forgiveness is a selfish act; it's much more about you than the other person. Maybe you resist forgiveness because your sense of justice demands punishment for the person who hurt you, and you feel that holding a grudge is somehow punishing him. Yes — but what you don't see is that it's hurting you more than it's hurting him. He hurt you once ... and every time you re-live that, and every time you feel anger toward him for it, you are inflicting the hurt on yourself again! How long are you going to keep stabbing yourself with it? Just let it go.... It's not your job to punish him, anyway. Your job is to make yourself happy and free of burdens (and carrying a grudge is definitely a burden)!

When you're living in the realm of pain and hostility, your energetic vibration is at a low frequency. And, since we always attract people and events at vibration levels similar to our own, you will necessarily be attracting unpleasant things. If you're stuck in memories of betrayal and pain, you are literally broadcasting a request for more of the same — and Life will be obligated to deliver it...! The effects will be not just emotional, but also physical. And, if you stay in that vibration long enough, you will do serious physical damage to yourself (I speak from experience; see the last paragraph on this page — starting with "I proved....").

If you can learn from my experience instead of repeating it, you'll be much happier! : ^ ) One thing that may help is to adjust your point of view. When someone hurts us, we may have a tendency to drop to a low vibration level and play the role of either victim or combatant. But we need to rise above that! As Shakespeare famously wrote, "All the world's a stage" ... and each of us merely an actor playing a role ... "And one man in his time plays many parts...."

We each play many parts in a lifetime ... and we each have many lifetimes. Once you see that, it brings up the following question:

Who Are You REALLY?

Are you a collection of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs? Are you a sequence of events (everything that has occurred in your lifetime)? What is your true identity?

Each of us has a story that we tell (to ourselves and others). It's based on our perception of the events we are conscious of in our lifetime. This collection of events (plus thoughts, feelings, and beliefs) creates a personality or a persona ... and that is what we usually define as our identity. But, in reality, that's not who we are at all....!

Actors on a stage, remember? And the word "persona" actually means "mask." We're actors on a stage, all wearing a whole bunch of masks! We may change the mask as we go through different periods in life. We may also change it from moment to moment, depending on which other persona(e) we are interacting with! This is a game we've all agreed to play; therefore, it seems normal to us, and it helps us to learn things from each other.

We can also learn something interesting and very important from a small group of people who don't play the game according to the normal rules: people who switch masks at any moment, seemingly arbitrarily. The rest of us don't like that — it's too unpredictable for us — and we call it Multiple Personality Disorder. You may be talking to Jack one day, and suddenly Jack is gone and you're talking to Randy — or even Susan! These personalities are all coming through the same physical body ... but even the physical body transforms as the persona changes. These multiple personalities may show differences in age, cognitive abilities, voice and manner of speaking, and physiology (including handedness, blood pressure, sexual orientation, allergies, illnesses, responses to drugs and medications, scars, eye color, skin color, even hair color). Clearly, our true identity is something bigger than the actors on the stage!

Once we realize that, it becomes easier to let go of our attachments to the actors and their stories. We can rise above the drama instead of being trapped in it. We can raise our energetic vibration and begin to see what we really are, behind the mask. Then forgiveness comes much more easily to us, because we see that the play we're involved in is not nearly as serious as we thought before! We find that nothing that happens onstage can really hurt us, if only we release the attachment to it...!

Here's a simple exercise to help you see who you really are:

On a sheet of paper in landscape orientation, write the following in 3 columns:

Column 1 (left-hand side of paper) — THE PAST: everything that has ever happened

Column 2 (center of paper) — THE PRESENT: everything happening now

Column 3 (right-hand side of paper): — THE FUTURE: everything that may ever happen

Take the paper in your hands, tear off the left-hand column (THE PAST) and let it drop ... and FEEL that the past no longer exists. Then tear off the right-hand column (THE FUTURE) and let it drop ... and FEEL that the future no longer exists. Then drop the remaining piece of paper, THE PRESENT ... and FEEL the total emptiness of the present moment.

Now ... who are you? Nothing but Awareness, with no past, no future, waiting in the empty moment for something to happen, something to be aware of....

See if you can go one step farther yet ... beyond even Awareness ... to pure Being. That's who you really are. BE-ing. I AM.

So ... is it still a big deal that one of your fellow actors, playing his part in the drama you both agreed to be in, did something terrible to the character played by you? Is it worth holding onto, or can you laugh at it and let it go? It's your decision, you're in charge of your own fate. If you decide to carry the hurt, it will literally weigh you down, make you slower and heavier, make you unhappy and sick. If you decide to let it go, to be free of it — to be your true Self — you'll be happy, healthy, and light as a feather!

There's nothing a bit heavy about who you really are. Anything heavy is something you're carrying, something you've either picked up or allowed to be put on you. As I said before, there will never be a better time for getting rid of it than right now! Just let it go and get back to your true Being...! You'll feel a hundred pounds lighter and a hundred years younger! : ^ )

The lightness and youthfulness will manifest physically, too. Truly, as I said, when you forgive and let go, you may find your eating habits changing and your weight dropping. Many people eat because of worry or anxiety or other emotional problems; they build a wall of fat — emotional armor — to protect themselves from emotional pain. But when they learn to forgive and let go, they no longer need the armor....

Every experience in our lives is leading us to the realization of our true Self, leading us to dump all the spiritual and emotional baggage we've accumulated. Most of us need to devote some attention to this every day, and there are many practices that can help us do it. Two of my favorites are energetic methods of raising our vibration and getting rid of toxins — Reiki and Jourei. Another one is Shinki. Please feel free to request Reiki, Jourei, or Shinki via the links above.

One final suggestion: If you're having a difficult time in relationship with someone, it may be helpful to have a spiritual conversation with the person. You can speak directly to the spirit, without the person being physically present. Get yourself in a private and comfortable place, and then imagine the other person there with you. Speak to the person calmly and peacefully, but say exactly what you want to say; don't hold anything back. Say your words aloud, just as if the person was physically present. This is more than a great way of unburdening yourself — your message really goes directly to the spirit of the other person. And you will very likely be pleasantly surprised by the results.